


Standing Scared

by Scullysfan



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode: s07e10 Sein Und Zeit, F/M, MSR, outsider pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 17:17:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4530435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scullysfan/pseuds/Scullysfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the outside looking in at a world made just for two, a brave man learns to fear those whom he wishes to protect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Standing Scared

Scully scares the hell out of me. 

That realization slams into my gut just as her pointed stare drills into my eyes. She's planted in the middle of the airplane's first class section, ignoring boarding passengers as they jostle briefcases and laptops, trying to stow away carry-ons and take their seats. The ticket stub in her hand directs her to seat 4C. 

Mulder is slumped against the window in seat 5A, the space next to him vacant and has my name on it. 

Yes, Scully, I see what you mean.

I had moved to take my seat when Scully pinned me with a glare not unlike the one she wore after opening Mulder's apartment door this morning. Her fierce determination to protect him filled that doorway. I saw it written on her face -- no one was going to bring him more grief, not on her watch. But a little girl is missing. Two other people are grieving, and we have a job to do. 

Despite what she must believe, I'm not wholly insensitive to Mulder's loss. I pleaded with Billie LaPierre to speak with one of the agents already on-site and when she refused, I booked two first class seats, instead of the coach accomodations the Bureau's finance department prefers. At least Mulder wouldn't be crammed into a seat barely big enough for Scully or surrounded by quite as many strangers who had no idea he'd lost the last remaining member of his family.

She deemed insignificant my attempt at good intentions with the set of her jaw and an icy order. "Well, then you'd better book three." It left me wondering once again when the superior and subordinate roles had been switched and why no one had informed me.

The look she's giving me now bears an uncanny resemblance to this morning's. The one that reduces me to a predator in her eyes. She's protecting Mulder from me, from the world, and I'll admit it hurts just a little to know she probably doesn't care how that makes me feel. I motion to my left in surrender.

"Agent Scully, why don't you take the seat next to Agent Mulder and I'll be in --"

"Thank you, sir."

Cutting short my offer, she slips past me and into the wide, leather-covered chair and turns immediately to her partner. Dismissed, I take my place one row ahead and across the aisle. My seatmate acknowledges my presence with a grunted good morning and, without waiting for a reply, returns to stock prices scrolling along his laptop's screen.

With the practiced nonchalance of a seasoned flyer, I ignore the flight attendant's safety lecture and watch Mulder and Scully out of the corner of my eye. 

Scully's rummaging in her bag, soon pulling out a small bottle of orange juice and a pill container. Unscrewing the juice lid, she offers the drink to Mulder. He accepts it with the shaky movements of a mechanical toy running on its batteries' last legs. Her offer of the pills -- sedatives, I would guess -- doesn't go over as well. He shakes his head. I can't hear him over the roar of the engines as the plane begins its taxi, but he makes a token protest. And that's all it is, a token protest. He can no more stand against her will than I could. She whispers to him. I know her voice is a whisper, that it's not the noise drowning her out, because it has always been this way. The two of them alone, turned inward,   
their wagons circled. Their words only for each other's ears.

He swallows the pills and empties the juice in a few gulps before handing the bottle back to her.

Tucking it into the seat pocket in front of her, she sinks back into the cushions, and her eyelids slip shut as the plane hurtles down the last few yards of runway and lifts off. Her head rocks gently from side to side with the shaking ascent of the jet. She looks tired, even more so than he does. If it was a hard night for him, what must it have been for her... bearing his pain and her own. A feminine Atlas.

Yes, Scully scares me. Even when she's at her most tender, as she is now, shifting in her seat to tuck one leg under the other so that she's turned toward Mulder. His face is already lax in sleep, his head drooping in her direction, and I doubt he is aware of his hand cradled between hers. Neither must he feel the almost imperceptible movement of her thumb over the back of his hand. 

Her fingers join her thumb in tracing patterns up and down each of his fingers, over his wrist and back again. 

It's my mistake to assume she's unaware of her surroundings, or to think my mesmerized observation of them would go unnoticed, for I had ceased to watch them peripherally. With my neck craned in their direction, I no doubt resemble the family mutt peering pathetically through the screen door at the meal being eaten inside.

This mutt tucks his tail and faces forward in his seat when the door slams in his face. Scully's sudden glance across the aisle morphs into a suspicious stare and startled, I leave them to the solitude she demands.

I leaf through the case notes for Amber Lynn's disappearance until I can no longer concentrate. Stealing a look at my agents I find them just as I left them. The flight attendants are serving drinks and the expensive mixed nuts that go along with the expensive everything else in first class, but they move briskly past Mulder and Scully at the latter's sharp shake of her head and silent warning not to wake her partner.

They're afraid of her, too.

Settling back in my seat I consider my fear of Scully. Being truthful, I must acknowledge that fear and guilt walk hand-in-hand in my life, and that maybe I'm not as afraid of Scully as I am of myself. 

It frightens me that this agent, this woman, this tremendous human being who has suffered violations and losses no one should experience, has survived to be stronger and more uncompromising than I could hope to be. It frightens me that even in feeble attempts to right wrongs, I've failed more often than not. Most of all it frightens me to recall the times she has looked at me with doubt in her eyes, but also belief... belief that I have betrayed her, or worse in her eyes, him. This morning was just the latest such incident.

It can't continue. I don't want to be this way, trapped between a fucking rock and a hard place, taking two steps toward salvation and then five steps toward Hell. Maybe that's my ultimate fear, that one day the dial on Krycek's little machine will turn just far enough to explode my heart, and Mulder and Scully will never know if I was traveling the road to good or evil when it happened. 

The rumble of the food cart moving down the aisle interrupts the long-time rumuniations I occasionally indulge. Feeling the need to take a piss before the requisite chicken, fish, or roast beef is served, I walk to the lavatory situated in front of this section of seats. 

Occupied. Shit. 

Turning to head back to my seat, I find the way blocked by flight attendents as they fill food and drink requests, so I settle against the outside of the lavatory to wait. Unexpectedly I notice it affords me an all-too-clear view of one of my agents in turmoil. 

From here I watch as Scully again declines service, this time of lunch, and turns to calm Mulder. 

It's a nightmare, I know. I remember. The tremors, cold sweats, my own voice drawing me from sleep with a shout or sometimes nothing more than a whisper. 

Mulder hasn't reached the shouting stage yet, though he's restless and the whimpers I can see, if not hear, are loud enough to attract the unwelcomed attention of passengers in front of them. Scully captures his face between her hands and smoothes her thumbs over his cheeks, shaking him a little until his eyes open. For the first time today a smile breaks across her face, but it's a tenuous one and it fades as his eyes slip shut again and his head bows. 

She talks to him in earnest, her hands never leaving his body, and I wonder if Mulder realizes his loss is not complete as long as he has this woman. 

Eyebrows raised and head tilted, she asks a question. His answer, a sigh and shake of his head, makes her shoulders slump, but only for a moment. She tries to move the armrest from between them, and I see her swear as she realizes it won't budge. Undeterred she lifts his right arm and brings it around her shoulders. A few graceful maneuvers later, and her back rests against his chest and the armrest, her head leaning on his shoulder as his chin rubs through her hair. Her left hand reaches across her stomach to hold his hand as it squeezes her arm, and together they rest.

Scully might be a frightening woman, but she's also wise -- wise in the ways of a broken man. She's giving Mulder something to hold onto, while his world spins in maddening circles. 

Sharon knew these things, too. She gave herself to me as a talisman against horrors found in sleep, when mortar shells flew through dreams to explode in our bed, when sheets tangling around legs became the clutching hands of dying comrades in arms. 

The lavatory door opens and I exchange hellos with a young woman as she exits and I leave the tableau before me to take her place. 

The rest of the flight passes without incident. Mulder and Scully barely move, and I manage to get a few moments sleep, trying in vain to ward off the headache building between my eyes. 

Upon landing, I suggest they proceed to baggage claim where I will meet them after picking up our rental car documentation and keys at the Lariat counter. Twenty minutes and a few dozen forms later and I'm approaching Baggage Claim B when I spot them. It's not Scully's hair that draws my attention or Mulder's tall frame. It's that they're the only two people alone in a crowd. 

He sits on the metal edge of the baggage carousel, his knees apart to accomodate her standing between them. She rests one hand on his shoulder, the other holding her laptop and carry-on. Deep in huddled conversation, her body blocking his view, her back turned toward me, neither notices as I move quietly to stand behind the large, square support beam just a few feet behind her. 

"...is over, I think you should request some time off." 

"Scully, I don't -- "

"Yes, Mulder, you do need it..." 

I tilt my head in her direction, straining to hear as her voice drops.

"... I need it for you."

They are silent for a moment and just as I begin to step from my hiding place, Mulder reminds me of my unstable position in their eyes.

"Skinner'll never approve the time, Scully. It hasn't been that long since I was out for weeks after... after my... after you came back from Africa."

Her voice is hard when she begins to speak again but it gives way to soft murmurs that I wish I knew. "He will approve it, Mulder, don't worry. Don't worry. I'll take care of everything."

My presence either goes unnoticed or ignored when I move from behind the post. Mulder is leaning forward, the top of his head resting against her stomach as her hand makes wide sweeps up and down his back. 

When this is over, she'll come to me. Just as she promised him, she'll come to take care of everything, her eyes blazing, daring me to deny her. I won't take that dare. 

Scully scares the hell out of me.

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Glory be, I wrote a Skinner fic! Apparently friendship knows no limits. ;- ) I can't take credit for the story idea -- my best friend, K, asked for it for her birthday, and she was even nice enough to plot the thing for me, more or less. With that much done, kinda hard to say no. So happy early birthday, K! 
> 
> Big thanks to fabulous beta-readers -- Jill, Jerry, Laney, and Lisa. Lisa, especially for instruction in the ways of first class. Laney,for bouncing around Skinner ideas and sparking thoughts. Jerry, for helping to iron out wrinkly sentences and a little tutoring in Fic Logistics 101. And Jill, for saving me from calling this story "Skinner". Hello, my name is Scullysfan, and I'm title-impaired.


End file.
